Liver transplantation

Liver transplantation is surgery that replaces a diseased or failing liver with a donor liver or part of one. It can use organs from deceased or living donors.

Orthotopic liver transplantation: A procedure that places a donor liver in the recipient’s usual liver position after removing the diseased liver. This is the standard operation for replacing a recipient’s whole liver.
Cirrhosis: Advanced liver scarring that distorts the organ’s structure and impairs its function. Cirrhosis is a leading reason patients develop irreversible liver failure.
Deceased donor liver transplantation: A transplant using a liver recovered from a person who has died and donated organs. It contrasts with living donation, which uses only part of a healthy donor’s liver.
Graft rejection: An immune response in which a recipient’s immune system attacks a transplanted organ or tissue. Rejection can damage a liver graft despite preventive immunosuppression.
Thomas Starzl: An American surgeon who pioneered clinical liver transplantation and developed its early surgical practice. His operations and research helped establish liver transplantation as a clinical treatment.
Living donor liver transplantation: A transplant using a surgically removed portion of a living donor’s liver. A graft portion can grow in both donor and recipient after transplantation.
Acute liver failure: Rapid loss of liver function in someone without established cirrhosis, often with impaired clotting and encephalopathy. Urgent transplantation can be lifesaving when acute liver failure does not recover.
Split liver transplantation: A procedure that divides one donor liver into grafts for two recipients, usually an adult and a child. It expands the number of recipients served by one deceased-donor organ.
Graft-versus-host disease: A complication in which immune cells from a transplant attack the recipient’s tissues. It is distinct from ordinary rejection and occurs rarely after liver transplantation.
Roy Calne: A British surgeon and immunologist who advanced organ transplantation and the use of immunosuppressive drugs. His work helped make sustained liver graft survival more achievable.

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